


Rising Sun Blues

by raiyana



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Harad, Legends, Loyalty, Quiet rebellion against the Dark Lord's reach, Second Age, Third Age, Working Against The Odds, friendship in adversity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 14:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raiyana/pseuds/raiyana
Summary: The Blue Wizards are beings of myths and legends - or are they?What happened after Pallando and Alator left for the vastness of the East... and what came before?Written for TRSB2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hrymfaxe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrymfaxe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Blue Wizards](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/514667) by hrymfaxe. 

> This work was partly inspired by tales appearing in 1001 Nights, which I have shamelessly appropriated as legends surrounding the works of the Blue Wizards

_I soar above the verdant green field, its swaying grasses no match for my eyes, no hiding place for the fat brown rabbits I am hunting._

_Anticipation makes my spirit bright, the heart in my body beat swiftly – this body is made for such a purpose and putting it to its best use is a thrill unmatched by any I have found below._

This was a good dream.

_I track my prey, lazily keeping myself aloft on warm thermals, waiting for the perfect moment to strike…_

_The summons is felt more than heard, when it comes, making me flap my wings for a second, listening to the voice of the Herald. Folding my strong wings along my body I screech an affirmation, plummeting towards the ground in a way that would look like a hazardous stunt to anyone but a falcon._

_But I love this part the most, even more than the lazy circling on thermals, I love this utter freedom of piercing the air with my body, complete control of every aspect as I race towards my prey. _

_I catch it – it’s easy – and the sweet taste of the rabbit’s blood fills me as a reward. _

_He is watching, I know._

_Not because he fears for me – in the air I am as skilled a huntress as he is on land in the company of Oromë, my talons precise instruments of death delivered as swiftly as an arrow from his great bow. _

_It’s not his desire to spy._

_No, Alator simply likes to watch me fly. _

_Alator is one of my dearest friends – when he cares to be known to the Children that is his name, though I know him by a collection of sounds that cannot be expressed by their limited throats, confined to the realm of Arda and their physical shapes as they are. Stepping from the treeline into the verdant meadow that Vana and her ladies have decorated so prettily, he smiles at me, the same wild joy in a good hunt that I feel soaring through the sky._

_Rustling my wings, I grin at him, tearing into my food. _

You know what the Valar want of me, my friend_, I say, the words hidden in the bird’s sharp call and the movement of feathers. _Or have you simply come to watch a Mistress of the skies take her prey more elegantly than your bow should manage?

They_… he pauses, dropping down beside me, playing with a strand of grass in a way I have rarely seen from him. Alator is impetuous though not so reckless as some of the Hunter’s Maiar, and rarely hesitant or indecisive._

You are uneasy,_ I reply, the shape of the bird melting away until I can wrap a small caress of a breeze around him, soothing calm made air. He sighs again, leaning into my touch, the body he wears strangely weary. _Have I distressed you?

“I have asked for your company.”

_These words he speaks out loud, his Child-shaped throat still able to speak words only Ainur understand, so long as his meaning is simple._

_My breeze flutters a strand of his hair, sways the flowers and grasses of the meadow around us. He is not soothed._

It is yours_, I tell him, confused. _You know I enjoy our symphonies._ I always have, even before there was Arda – something in his deep swift beat fits harmoniously with my lighter notes. It is beautiful music we make, no matter the shapes we pour ourselves into._

“The High King,”_ he begins, hesitant and solemn, _“has tasked some of us with undertaking a journey to Endorë and there seek to thwart the works of Mairon in service of his banished Master.” _Twisting the grass around a finger, tugging it free only to tear it into small pieces, he pauses._ “I have asked for your company.”

What do you not say?_ I wonder, studying him. I have flown over the lands of Endorë, of course, watched fondly as the Children spread across the land beneath me. I have been clouds, breezes, birds, storms – I have wandered marketplaces as a swirl of dust, and shaken the leaves from trees. _

“If you go with me,”_ he continues, and I know this part will hurt me – Alator’s face has always been expressive. _“If you go with me, we shall build new bodies, bodies of Men, for they are whom Mairon – Sauron – will seek to sway to his side.”_ He pauses, closing his eyes for a moment. They are sorrowed but determined when he opens them again, that familiar colour of tree bark and moss as he stares at me. It is not a question of whether he will accept this task, I know. _

_He already has._

_The body before me contains _Alator_, yes, but it is not the form of the Eldar Children this time, changed subtly to match the form of a Secondborn._

_I still, taking in the rounded ear, the stockier build – no slender sprinter, this shape – built to withstand hardship, I feel._

“If you go with me, we shall not return to these shores until our task is done,”_ he breathes, a sorrowed tinge to the sound like heavy purple clouds._

I… would not be able to fly_, I say, sinking down to the grass, feeling the heavy shackles of the earth close around me, foreign and strange to a being who spends most of her time taking wing in one way or another. _

_Alator does not respond, but he does not need to, looking at me with that sorrow still. _

_I leave him there._

* * *

Sitting at the edge of a sandstone cliff, morning sun throwing her shadow off into a shape still not vast enough to represent her true form, Pallando shivered, drawing the blue folds of her cloak tighter around her. The dream lingered in her thoughts, the reason her golden eyes were staring across the desert dunes, the hazy band of a river little more than a shadow in the distance.

She remembered.

As the pale morning light of Arien’s face grew slowly stronger, her face was turned West, her heart beating in a body that had ever lacked wings and longed for them, longed to throw herself off the edge of the precipice and be caught by the soft hands of the air that had been her second home.

Instead, she curled into herself, staring at something no one else would see, and felt the cool wind play through her hair, a promise kept.

“Thank you, brother…” she whispered, having no fear that her words would wake the camp of Men sleeping not far away from her. Only one among them would even hear the sound as words, and he, too, was fast asleep. “I was weary. _Thank you._”

Closing her eyes, she breathed slowly, remembering the much-loved form answering to that appellation.

Around her, the wind danced.


	2. Chapter 2

Images played before her watering eyes, memories given life anew, grief still lingering in each as they passed before her, and yet it was such sweet sorrow that Pallando dared not turn her mind away, dared not focus on other worries.

_“You called me, brother,” I say, floating into his room and reforming myself, perching on the windowsill, and admire the sunlight playing on my feathered arms. I, too, have an Eldar form, though I miss the wings when I wear it, and so often make my skin sprout feathers instead. _

_“Little Bird,” Eonwë says, watching me with those eyes that have always been able to see all of me. He, too, bears new worry. “Alator has told you of his request, I see.” He sighs, getting to his feet and joining me by the window._

_I shrug. “Did you think he would not?” _

_Eonwë shakes his head, the wings lying along his back rustling with agitation. It’s an idea, and I save it for later – adding wings to the shape of a Child has not worked for me before, but perhaps it is because they were not large enough to work – before I realise that if I accept the task before me, ‘later’ is going to be a very long while later indeed. _

_“No,” he sighs, “but I will miss your sweet voice and your playful breezes.” _

_“But if I stayed….” I begin, though it is Eonwë who says what we both know already._

_“You would miss Alator too much, yes…” he murmurs, “and those breezes would turn melancholy until you went to him.” Then he looks at me, and that same sorrow in Alator’s eyes now shine in Eonwë’s, and for the first time I feel afraid of his next words. “But he is in the shape of a Man, now,” Eonwë says, not unkindly, “and when he leaves Aman, he will not understand the voice of the wind, nor be familiar with all the tongues of the birds you love.” Placing a hand on my arm, his touch gentle familiar comfort, he adds, “He would no longer be able to hear you in the wind, sweet sister.”_

_“Will… will he remember me?” I ask, wanting to jump from the tower and fly up high to escape the sadness of this room. I force myself to be still, seeing the answer to my fear in Eonwë’s gentle gaze. “If I do not?”_

_“No.” His voice is still gentle, kind like the feel of his arms around me, but implacable, too, and I do not doubt the truth of his words. “Not truly… in time, he will remember this realm and its inhabitants like a hazy dream more than the truth of life as is, always yearning to return to somewhere he can’t quite recall.”_

_Leaning into his side – family, as we have always been, born of wind and speed and the pure joy of motion – I stare out the window, watching a wisp of cloud pass. _

_“Will I lose this, also?” I ask, my voice so small it would be lost if he was any further away. We both know my choice has already been made._

_Eonwë nods. “I am sorry,” he whispers, “but the minds of Men were not made to perceive all that the eyes of the Ainur see.”_

_“Will you watch over me, brother?” For the first time since Eä formed before us, I feel fear, wanting to hide from the enormity of what I am intending, wishing that Eonwë’s great wings could shield me from the grief of our parting._

_“This I do swear,” he replies, breathing the vow into my hair – I will keep it there, I know, clinging to each small strand – and hugs me tightly. “I will go with you to Irmo’s Gardens, if you will it. Help you dream up your new shape.”_

“And so you have,” she whispered, feeling the wind dry her tears one by one, the far-off screech of a vulture like affirmation that she had been heard. Her fingers, turned a darker brown than the original had been, stretched before her, reaching for that which cannot be grasped by mortal hands, the sunlight at her back catching in her sapphire ring.

The ring was a gift from a lord grateful for the life of his son, saved from a dark poison of the Enemy’s making. The piece had been made nearly five centuries before by the foremost Dwarf jeweller of the Orocarni, and it was the only gift of its kind she had not passed on to another in time.

Because the sapphire had been set in a ring of feathers cast in gold and bracketed by topazes the exact colour of her eyes.

It was like a small reminder of her true home. The sky.

“Have you need of aught, Mistress Azarpari?” a little girl asked, holding out a bowl of what had been prepared over the communal fire for breakfast. “Mother says you have not eaten.”

Pallando turned her head, accepting the bowl with a tender smile. “No, little one, I am but listening to the wind. Tell your mother thank you for the meal.” She paused, running her hand over the chubby cheek of the child. “You will grow to be a great trainer of horses, sweetling,” she murmured, closing her eyes, “yet you must be wary of the stallion you choose for your own. Choose wisely.” The girl, no more than six turns of the sun, scampered back to the fire, tugging on her mother’s skirt, but Azarpari did not notice, her thoughts travelling back to a question whose answer she now understood far better yet had come no closer to discerning in truth, busying herself with the bowl and spoon…

* * *

What is Man?

_As I float through the fragrant branches of Irmo’s gardens, I ponder this question._

_Loud. Warm. Joyful in song. Not as we are – nor as the Elves, of course – but the Music touches their hearts, too, and that gives me comfort. _

_I have seen Men, roaming the great swathes of land that is Endorë. I have heard their cries._

_Some have cursed me for a fickle mistress, their sails losing speed on open seas – some have praised me for a small breath of mountain chill on a hot day. Some have begged for more, for less, some have screamed, hoping I should carry their prayers to benevolent ears. _

_Men’s tongues are many, yet the same, also, and I hear them all. _

_So I shall have a tongue, swift and agile, and ears to hear the things they mean with the words I do not know. _

_Tracing the soft edge of a red-petalled bloom, I wander further into my thoughts, memories of all I have seen floating through the Music that is my true nature, coalescing slowly. _

‘Look into my eyes, Father! See my truth!’ _The young man was accused of wrongdoing – but truth could be read in his eyes and his Father believed him. I wonder if this is true for all, but I have heard them say so of eyes before, that looking into those of another shows you truth._

_For a mission so perilously linked to the lies spread by misguided Mairon, Truth will be a mighty aid. I shall ensure my eyes always reflect the Truth of their watcher, yes. _

_I Sing, weaving strands of starlight and memory and music, shaping a form at once so much me that it is almost familiar and so alien as to make me scream in terror at the thought of confining myself to such a small un-feathered space. _

_But I will._

_Alator should not go alone, and I must be strong enough for this and much more, strong enough to bear forgetting what I have always known, as Eonwë tells me I will._

_I will miss wings._

_For myself – and I should not be afraid to admit it even before the summoned Council of Mahanaxar – I cannot help but wish that I might yet retain the ability to commune with the birds of the sky, if not to receive messages from Lord Manwë or send any to Taniquetil, then so that I might not forget entirely what it feels like to fly._

_It is a selfish desire._

_But I am selfish, in this, even as I am selfish in my choice to go with Alator rather than spend his absence unable to speak with him._

_He will not have broken such a rule, if it exists, I know._

_What else do I know of Men?_

_They lead harsh lives, marked by strife that seems so much harder for the brief span of years allotted to them. They love fiercely, family or not, bound by blood or oath – in this they are familiar – seeking the immortality denied to them through the passing on of themselves in children._

_I like children’s laughter – it is sweet wind – and the low fervent words of lovers. _

_They favour light over darkness where it might be found, commanding mastery of fire in all but a few of its forms. I think of Aulë’s forges, the red fires of creation kept there, and I smile. The Smith will make the frame that is to support my creation, and Lady Vairë and her ladies will spin Yavanna’s earthen covering into flesh, giving it life under the guidance of Estë. I know Lord Irmo will grant me some measure of necessary wisdom, the power of what Men call Magic, though it is Music given form and purpose to my hands, and King Manwë will give the body the air it needs to take its first breath as I inhabit it._

* * *

_I have floated a long time when I finally open my eyes and discover that I _have_ eyes. They are dim, and cannot see the Music, and so I spend a while weeping into Eonwë’s feathered breast as he hums a song I can still hear, soothing my rapidly beating heart. _

_Blood rushing in veins – a hard sound, rhythmic woosh-woosh-wooshes – spreading life and energy in this body. _

_I stumble, stand, _fall_, but Eonwë’s hand closes on mine, warm and safe, and I take three tottering steps to the Maia – I do not recall her name – holding out a blue garment for me. The weave is fine, silver threading like stars along the hems. It swishes around my limbs, growing surer with each step. The earth beneath my bare feet welcomes my steps, my toes burrowing into its warmth._

_My skin is brown, like once my feathers, and that is a small happiness in all the strange that surrounds me. _

_My hair, I laugh, is like wildfire, all the different hues of Aulë’s forges, winding its way down my back. My eyes, when I look into one of the pools, are golden like a falcon’s though shaped like a Man’s, and that, too, is pleasing. _

_“Such a wondrous colour,” Eonwë murmurs, touching my hair – and with a subtle thought his feathers change to match, and I try to hide the pain of that easy transformation when I cannot do the same._

_But he knows, he always knows, pulling me close once more and wrapping his large wings around me._

_“Hush, sweet sister,” he hums, “be not sorrowed too soon.”_

_Yet I find that I cannot be joyous, clinging tighter to him as our imminent parting suddenly looms ever larger._

_Alator is waiting for us as the entrance to the Gardens, his new shape not quite so similar to his familiar Eldarin one when I study it properly. There is more mass to it, somehow, less… light. _

_He is more confident in its limbs, however, where I am still as unsure as a newly fledged youngling. _

_My stumbling makes me laugh – I am ever-graceful, in the air, but on land my feet have never truly belonged and they know it. Somehow it is a comfort to think that my feet still remember their true element. I almost hope they will continue to do so as we journey into the far reaches of Endorë, so far from the spire of Taniquetil that even a memory seems impossibly far away. _

* * *

But new feet learned their uses well, dancing, running, riding, always moving her across this vast landscape, never stilling for long, yet also returning unerringly to paths once trod. Putting her bowl down on the sand beside her, Pallando watched her shadow shorten, the sounds of bustling behind her as insignificant as the view before her, her mind preoccupied with memories of ancient days.

Vaguely, she heard one of the old women entertain a gaggle of children with an old tale, concerning an old man, his scheming first wife, and magic that had turned his only son into a calf meant for slaughter.

The child, of course, had been saved – otherwise it would have been no good story, after all – transformed by a lady who had seen his true form and knew magic herself.

Pallando smiled, remembering. The smile turned into a light chuckle as the old woman’s tale continued, granting the lady’s hand to the boy upon his coming of age – _which I would never have accepted_, Pallando thought – and avenging the ill-deed upon the first wife by turning her into a beautiful gazelle so as not to torment the man further by forcing him to watch over an ugly creature.

That part, at least, had been true.

The boy had never been an _animal_, however, but poisoned into near-madness along with his mother by the jealous and barren first wife in the absence of his father, the chieftain. The second wife – _what was her name...? – _had died from the ‘treatment’ proposed by the first wife upon the husband’s return, but Pallando and Alator had intervened before the plan to destabilize a region by interfering with the succession of power could claim another innocent.

The transformation of the first wife had been an accident of temper, mostly, though Pallando had never felt guilty for changing the woman into a deer – at least she had made a pretty deer, and the chieftain had kept her well until he was called beyond the circles of the world, taking her with him onto his funeral pyre as a way to release her spirit alongside his own.

As the old woman finished her tale, children clamouring for ‘just one more, Auntie’, Pallndo wondered what the descendants of the Men now playing behind her would say of this visit, whether Alator might in time be a spirit called upon for rain, or if she herself would be a benevolent goddess granting a bountiful oasis.

Tracing the pearls in her staff, the wood hardened to stone by age, trapping the small spheres within its ebony cages, wondering how many stories they had spawned in the three millennia they had walked among the Men.

Too many.

And not yet enough, still.

_We have walked this land so long, beloved, that we are passed into myths and legends of its people, creatures of magic and wonder that are scarce recognisable as the people we were to the people in them. _

Smiling wryly to herself, Pallando cast the thought into the wind, as always torn between fearing and hoping that it would not be heard.

She hoped that it would, even as she wished her most beloved would not feel the despair it was sure to inspire, the guilt he felt for stealing her away from their home to this place an ever-burning flame in his heart.

She dreaded the day it would not.


	3. Chapter 3

# Chapter 3

The river caught the sunlight in a sudden flare of brightness, even though it was dimmed by the distance and the warm haze that seems to shield any desert from view if the watcher is too far away, and Pallando shuddered once. That light on the water felt like the true border, stretching between what _was_ and the present, caring little for the plights of mortals – or Ainur bound to mortal forms.

But water had always marked boundaries.

And crossing the element of Ulmo was never without a certain melancholy, the sound of water lapping at a hull a reminder of the first journey her then newly-formed body had taken, abandoning the life she had known for one yet to be determined with the single step that carried her from the quay to the deck of the ship.

Closing her eyes, Pallando sank into another memory, the scent of salt and water and tar mingling in her nose instead of the warm smell of dusty dunes that she had been breathing before, her feet still uncertain upon the moving planks that swayed gently with every wave...

_The golden elf – Glorfindel, for whose heroism many songs have been composed since the fall of fair Gondolin – and his fair-haired companion – Gildor, the son of Finrod reborn – are as sorrowed as we at the parting from Aman, waving at their kinsmen upon the shore. Gildor, young and a little impetuous, has come for his father, who ceded the task, choosing to remain with his wife and small daughter. Glorfindel, too, is an emissary of the Valar, sent to aid the Eldar against the coming tide of darkness. _

_I feel it, still, in the Music, that discordant eddy of sound that cannot be heard by these ears, though I know the feeling will fade, just as the sight of our home fades behind us. _

_The sea stretches afore us, the waves giving little knowledge of what rests beneath them, sunken Beleriand with all its treasures and bloody history. Our first journey is to Lindon, to deliver the Elves and take counsel with High King Gil-Galad and thence onwards across the land to where Curumo dwells and further still._

_I catch sight of Uinen, her smile melancholy but kind as ever, her foam-flecked fingers caressing my cheek in farewell as the gulls cry over head. Ossë, white locks mingling in the foamy waves of our wake, speeds our journey – and the blessing of Ulmo ever goes with us._

_My heart is lifted slightly by their company, and by Alator’s silent presence beside me, his face, as mine, shadowed by the fine blue cloth of our new raiment. _

_It reminds me of the sky, and I am pleased by the colour he chose for us – Curumo chose white as his raiment, while Aiwendil would only ever wear earthy colours as Yavanna’s chosen, and Olórin has not yet decided on a shape for his task at all. _

_They are not yet ready to leave._

_I reach down, squeezing Alator’s fingers slightly – a comfort shared between Men, I have seen, whether small children or old greybeards – almost surprised how calming this body finds the small touch. _

_When he squeezes mine, I smile._

_We will be well, together. _

“Your thoughts dwell far from this land on this eve,” Alator said, placing a hand on his beloved companion’s shoulder and startling her out of whatever reverie she had fallen into, staring at the vast sands of the desert. “Will you share them with me?”

_The ship is carried up the estuary, passing the lighthouse with its guiding beam of crystal light – I am pleased they turn their minds to such useful inventions, though the night holds no terror for me – rowed by Telerin sailors who read the sea as I read the wind, speeding us towards the distant lights of Mithlond harbour where Círdan the Shipwright awaits. _

“I am… remembering,” Pallando muttered, accepting the wineskin he offered and taking a long sip. “I find I cannot recall much of what used to be familiar. Sometimes…” she sighed, handing the skin back and leaning against his side.

“Sometimes it is good to remember why we are here,” Alator murmured, tilting his head back and swallowing a measure of the red fluid as he wrapped an arm around her slender shoulders. “That the world is more than this sandy place and the hard Men who inhabit it.”

Pallando did not reply, leaning into the embrace as she looked out across the dunes, her golden eyes tracking the spirals of a vulture seeking its next meal. Alator had forgotten more, she knew, and more than he would admit, too, but it seemed to torment him less than the loss of her wings and the freedom of flight did her.

“Sometimes, my friend,” he sighed, “I fear we shall be wholly unrecognisable upon our return.” _If we do return at all_.

“Casting off this shape shall be no hardship, I wager,” Pallando protested. “Unless you fear losing memory of what it has seen in the doing.”

“I fear only our failure – can you not see that we have been abandoned in these lands by our kin?” he asked, picking up a handful of golden-red sand, warm from the merciless heat of Arien above, yet by midnight as cool as Tilion’s face in pursuit.

“I always knew our failure would happen, dearest,” she whispered. “Our task was insurmountable, and well did the High King know this in the giving… but so long as even a few of those we have touched stand against the corruption of Sauron, we have not failed in truth.”

“Still, I…”

“Master, Mistress, the raiders have returned!”

They turned as one, looking at the breathless youth who dared meet neither set of eyes.

“Then we must needs join the celebration.” Nodding to himself, Alator got to his feet, brushing dust off his trousers.

Pallando smiled, glancing back at the circling vulture heralding its success with a loud cry that resonated in the still air as she got to her feet. Drawing her blue cloak around her, she admired the flash of sunlight in the sapphire of the ring that adorned her finger.

“As you say,” she nodded, leather sandals allowing some of the heat from the sand to warm her soles with each step, “we shall join the celebrations.”

The young man who had come for them took a step back, bowing politely to her, and Pallando gracefully inclined her head in return as she passed. The Men of the East feared her powers, even as they loved her gifts for healing, and deeply revered Alator’s gift for the guiding of fortunes and conjuring of spells. Smiling to herself, amused, she dropped the hood of her cloak low over her face to shield him from her gaze. 

Rómestámo’s – for she had many names among these people – golden eyes belonged to a thousand tales… but only one woman wandering the vast lands.

And she did not enjoy the apprehension in their faces.


	4. Chapter 4

# Chapter 4

The desert perch and the memory of what was both faded with the distance of miles. This land fed horses and the people who tend them, a vast steppe sporadically dotted with tents made from hides.

But this was the central home of a People, the place the tribes gathered upon the chill breath of winter, bargaining, competing, _loving_, sharing news and reaffirming the bond of kinship between their people.

Azarpari had observed weddings, duels, death-rites, and even births, here, the great wooden structure made from timber carried in from places weeks away by horseback.

The Men liked to build, and that was a commonality between them – so, too, the Eldar, admittedly, so perhaps it was a trait of all the Children – no matter how difficult the materials. Most structures on the steppe were made from slender branches and leather hides – easy to erect and move with the herds – but this place had a foundation of stone quarried by Dwarven hands, and timbered walls decorated with the legends of Men. There was a version of Yavanna, giver of life and food, as well as Oromë, for the hunters among them – Alator had found kindred spirits there, she knew – and even a rendering of Námo with Nienna’s face, offering merciful judgement of the dead.

“Drink! Drink! Drink!”

Azarpari sat back on the soft pillows that had been brought out for the ladies of the chieftain’s harem – and for herself as a highly honoured guest – observing the firelight glancing off skin glistening with sweat despite the chill of the air outside.

This was the Long Night, the darkness outside the walls kept at bay by the cheer of fire and drink, the pleasure of company and joy.

And more or less friendly competitions. She smiled wryly, eyeing the loud group in the centre of the long hall.

“Drink! Drink! Drink!”

The chant was familiar, common to any feast-hall they had visited; an odd bond between cultures in the intake of intoxicants. North of this world of sand and heat, in a people not dissimilar to the clan of horse-masters, they drank fermented honey. In this hall it was a blend of spices and sugars, dark and pungent with the overlying tang of fruity alcohol – guaranteed to make the unwary stumble off his feet. The drink was pleasant enough, she thought, though it could never compare to the taste of Irmo’s wine. Except she found that she could no longer recall the precise flavour of that drink… had it been tangy, sweet, or maybe something else entirely?

A loud thump broke her thoughts, made her glance up to see a young man on the ground, snoring in the sleep of the truly soused, while around him the men cheered to the victor of the contest.

Alator rose from his seat, swaying gently, and for a moment Pallando saw with piercing clarity how vividly he remembered what she had thought he had forgotten, knowing that come the dawn that veil would once more fall over his mossy eyes, hiding his thoughts even from her view.

Hiding the guilt now plain to see.

He was the reason she had left the home she still longed for, feeling the beckoning of a place now dream-like in her mind. She had called this land home, too, for so many years, no longer able to decide, even to herself, which was dearer to her heart.

It was home, but the land was not what she missed, not the gem-strewn beaches or the impossibly high peak of Taniquetil, not even the deep forests that ring with the sound of Oromë’s horns.

What she longed for was the once-known freedom of shape, unfettered by the shackles of mortal flesh she had cloaked herself in to come here.

Pallando missed flying, suddenly aware of the acute ache in her heart, clutching at the fabric over her breast as she stared into those eyes she loved best – and knew he would see her sorrow.

But she could not look away, could not hide, as utterly exposed to Alator’s gaze as any mortal heart could be to her own.

The goblet – gleaming gold in the firelight – in his hand rose slowly, something wry laying at the corner of his mouth, the gesture an offer of respect to _them_ but a silent apology to _her_… one she did not need.

This was always her choice.

She moved, walking past those too inebriated to care and those pretending to be so alike, grasping the goblet around his fingers.

_I would choose you again_.

She drank, feeling the slight tremble of his body, the swift racing of his heart clear beneath her fingertips.


End file.
